The Domestic Violence Research Project was a pilot study
designed to examine the dynamics of domestic violence within two of
the ten police districts that comprise the city of Boston. The
objectives were to collect data on domestic violence in greater detail
than previously possible, conduct various analyses on this
information, and determine how the findings could best be used to
improve the police, prosecutorial, and social service responses to
domestic violence. Data for 1993 are a str... (more info)

The Domestic Violence Research Project was a pilot study
designed to examine the dynamics of domestic violence within two of
the ten police districts that comprise the city of Boston. The
objectives were to collect data on domestic violence in greater detail
than previously possible, conduct various analyses on this
information, and determine how the findings could best be used to
improve the police, prosecutorial, and social service responses to
domestic violence. Data for 1993 are a stratified random sample of
reported domestic violence incidents occurring throughout the
year. The sample represents approximately 27 percent of the domestic
violence incidents reported in 1993 for the two districts studied, B3
and D4. The 1994 data include all reported incidents occurring in the
two districts during the period May to July. After the incident
selection process was completed, data were collected from police
incident reports, follow-up investigation reports, criminal history
reports, and court dockets. Variables include arrest offenses, time of
incident, location of incident, witnesses (including children), nature
and extent of injuries, drug and alcohol use, history of similar
incidents, whether there were restraining orders in effect, and basic
demographic information on victims and offenders. Criminal history
information was coded into five distinct categories: (1) violent
offenses, (2) nonviolent offenses, (3) domestic violence offenses, (4)
drug/alcohol offenses, and (5) firearms offenses.

Methodology

Study Purpose:
The Domestic Violence Research Project was a
comprehensive, research-oriented pilot study designed to examine the
dynamics of domestic violence within two of the ten police districts
that comprise the city of Boston. The objectives were to collect data
on domestic violence in greater detail than previously possible,
conduct various analyses on this information, and determine how the
findings could best be used to improve the police, prosecutorial, and
social service response to domestic violence. Some of the important
questions this project attempted to address were: Are there any
variations in the patterns of domestic abuse based on neighborhood
demographics? What types of relationships are most prone to such
behavior? How often are children involved/present? How often does an
incident involve a restraining order violation? How often are injuries
incurred? How often and why are charges dropped against offenders?
What is the rate of revictimization? What role, if any, does the
criminal background of the offender play? To what extent are drugs
and/or alcohol involved?

Study Design:
The study was conducted in two districts within
Boston, Massachusetts: district B3, which encompasses Mattapan and
North Dorchester, and district D4, which encompasses the South End,
Back Bay, and portions of the Fenway area. The project involved both
retrospective and prospective data collection and analysis phases.
The retrospective phase involved collecting a random sample of
incidents from the two pilot districts from throughout the 1993
calendar year. After the sample selection process was completed, data
from police incident reports, follow-up investigation reports,
criminal history reports, and court dockets were entered into the
database. Since background checks were performed in February of 1994,
the researchers were able to obtain information on the offenders'
criminal conduct since the 1993 sample incident as well as their prior
alleged criminal history. The prospective phase of the project
consisted of collecting current data for 1994 and comparing it with
the 1993 sample, to improve the domestic violence database and to
provide the domestic violence detectives with a case management tool.
During the period from May to July 1994, 736 incidents were collected
for District 3 and 416 incidents for District 4 from the domestic
violence-related police incident reports of the Department's Field
Reports Unit. The opportunity the prospective phase offered was the
ability of the detectives to speak with victims and to relay this
information to the researchers during the project. To assist with
this, the researchers developed a Victim Interview Form for the
detectives to complete after speaking with the victims. This allowed
more data to be collected than could be collected for the 1993
incidents. Conversely, the 1994 criminal history information was less
informative because the time frame was only, at most, four months. In
addition, data were not collected from original court dockets for the
1994 incidents because the majority of the cases were still pending at
the time of the project. A key component of the Project was the
establishment of a "Partnership Group" involving criminal justice
agencies, community social service organizations, and a variety of
advocate groups. The Partnership Group provided a wide variety of
perspectives on the issue of domestic violence, and allowed the
Project to be responsive to a broad range of public agencies beyond
law enforcement. During initial discussions, each member described the
types of information that would be most useful for problem-solving and
prevention of domestic violence. These discussions contributed to the
construction of the initial variable list of the Project. The
Partnership Group later reviewed and improved upon the 1993 database
design for use with the 1994 data. For purposes of this project, a
"violent offense" was defined as any form of assault against a
person, including threats. If the assault was further defined as a
domestic situation on the offender's criminal history sheet, it was
categorized as a "domestic violence offense". Domestic violence was
defined within the Boston Police Department as the occurrence of one
or more of the following acts between family or household members:
causing or attempting to cause physical harm, placing another in fear
of imminent physical harm, or causing another to engage involuntarily
in sexual relations by force, threat, or duress. Family or household
members were considered persons who either were currently or had been
married to one another, were or had been residing together in the same
household, were or had been related by blood or marriage, had a child
in common regardless of whether they had ever been married to each
other or lived together, or were or had been in a substantive dating
or engagement relationship, considering the length and type of
relationship, the frequency of interaction, and the length of time
since the termination of the relationship.

Sample:
For 1993, cases were selected using a stratified random
sample of reported domestic violence incidents occurring throughout
1993. Cases from 1994 were not randomly selected. Rather, they were
all reported incidents of domestic violence occurring during May 1 to
July 31, 1994.

Data Source:

criminal justice records, and personal interviews

Description of Variables:
Data were collected on a number of areas, including
arrest offenses, time of incident, location of incident, witnesses
(including children), nature and extent of injuries, drug and alcohol
use, history of similar incidents, whether there were restraining
orders in effect, and basic demographic information on victims and
offenders. Criminal history information was also collected and coded
into five distinct categories. These were (1) violent offenses, (2)
nonviolent offenses, (3) domestic violence offenses, (4) drug/alcohol
offenses, and (5) firearms offenses.

Response Rates:
Not applicable.

Presence of Common Scales:
None.

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1996-07-13

Version History:

2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 5 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.